I’ve hated body hair on me ever since it first arrived. I wasn’t a quick starter. Actually, I seem to remember getting body hair turning up late on compared to everyone else I knew. HRT in my late teens for a couple of years stopped the hormonal confusion my body was going through for a while, and it was all staved off even longer.

But it returned, bringing reinforcements in my early twenties. Given the way that I also started losing thwe hair on my head at the same time, I had a suspicion that it was marching southward in the night. Either that, or I was managing to grow through the hair on my head. I had a fear of ending up with nothing but seventies style sideburns.

Hair issues was something that I started to address when seeing a lovely man who immediately spotted the evil dihydrotestosterone was probably to blame. It is a weird hormone that when present in some people causes the hair on their head to disappear whilst the hair everywhere else attepts to turn that person into a Gorilla who has had a bad hair day. Luckily the anti-androgen Finasteride stops it being made in the body. That and a return to the wonders of HRT finally started to reverse the damage already caused to my body.

The hair on my head came back. Mostly. Well, at least I’ve got enough that I look normal again, and as long as I don’t try for a council facelift style of tying it back, the world at large doesn’t have to know that I have a slightly higher hairline at either side than I would like (fringes are a wonderful thing in moderation). It also got rid of the love rug hair on my back, arms and chest that had rather bothered me. I mean, no girl wants to look down and see John Travolta’s chest with breasts poised somewhere about their person.

The one area all this seemed to miss was my legs. I’ve always had hairy legs; it was one of the first places hair sprung from in puberty. HRT made it slightly thinner, but not much. Now, I like wearing skirts a lot; especially short skirts. The problem is that I almost needed a lawnmower to keep up with the hair. To add insult to injury, any kind of shaving or epilation left me after a couple of days with what looked akin to acne on my legs. Ingrowing hairs were a nightmare. I tried waxing strips once (a good job no-one told the gestapo about these, or else every British military secret of the second world war might have been quickly divulged under ‘questioning’). I also tried those chemical hair removal creams. If the smell of ammonia ridden dead goat wasn’t enough to contend with, the acne was ten times worse helped no doubt by almost third degree chemical burns.

Laser was out of the question unless I could find that money tree at the bottom of the garden that the taxman and my car seem to act like I have (haven’t found it yet or maybe the Blackbirds stripped it bare before I arrived?) so it was never tried. At any rate, my body hair is notoriously resiliant, as the stuff that came on my face has taken around twenty sessions of laser and a dozen sessions of electrolysis to deal with so far.

Recently, the wacky funky Jenny Laboritories have devised a new method. This involves Oestragel, and desperation (which can be a powerful thing). I used to smear it on my arms for some obscure reason lost in the mists of the NHS. I have a repeat prescription, but the stuff was less use than an umbrella in a hurricane. Recently I tried using it on my legs. Well, it might do something, I figured. On the other hand, pigs might fly out of my arse. Pork chops anyone?

It has worked bizarrely and against all odds. I’ve been applying it without fail for over three months day in, day out to my upper and lower legs. The results have been staggering. I don’t need to shave for over a week, and the hair growth is thinner and finer. What is more, my skin seems more resiliant to shaving (no doubt because it isn’t put under the blade every day any more) and the post shaving acne irritation is no more. It is really working!

The thing about Oestragel is that there is a lot of bollocks that surround it (in a medical rather than physical testicular nature, you understand). I’ve heard too many people to mention try and claim that it cannot act locally to where it is applied on the body, but the results prove otherwise. Maybe flooding an area with a high level of Oestragen might have something of an effect?

It seems then that Oestragel can work as part of a balanced and controlled hormone diet and that expensive options like nuking your skin with medical lasers (“…no Mr Bond, I expect you to die….!”) or zapping them with electricity with electrolysis aren’t necessarily the best way to deal with any little hairs that aren’t on your face. Currently Zoë is seeing whether the same technique will have the same effect on her.’t on your face. Currently Zoë is seeing whether the same technique will have the same effect on her.